Leftover
by Aoluas Anminti
Summary: (from the Dragon Age k-meme prompt) After Fenris leaves, Hawke is upset and angry. Wanting comfort and intimacy, Hawke decides to seek out Anders, who she is certain has held a torch for her. The twist? Anders refuses. One-shot.


_This might be funny_, Anders thought, _if it weren't so painful._

Hawke was sitting on his cot, separated from the rest of the clinic by a dingy partition – not that it matters, since even in Darktown there weren't many people coming into his clinic at this time of night, really more early morning. The doors were closed, the lamps were off within and without, and the clinic was quiet. Anders had seen Fenris earlier, heading to Hawke's estate, and decided to give himself the night off. He'd thought that he'd be too distracted to deal with patients, and that he might get some sleep. Instead, he'd stayed up unwillingly envisioning them together until he'd set to reworking his manifesto with a vengeance. He hadn't even notice the time passing; whenever Justice felt that Anders was focusing the task of mages' rights, the spirit gave him energy and seemed to confer his peculiar sense of timeless so that the work might go easier on the host.

That was how Hawke had found him, slipping in he didn't know from where, in her comfortable and completely unarmored house finery. Without a word, she'd sat down on his cot. Justice demanded that he finish the edit he was in the process of making before he even acknowledged her. He worked to finish quickly, because his mind was no longer on the task. As he finally sat back and examined her, he felt rage and a sick jealousy pool in his gut. She had obviously just come from a thorough lay. Her hair was in disarray, her lips were still swollen, and he could see what was apparently only the beginning of a trail of gentle bruises along her neck. His fists reflexively clenched in his lap, and he took a deep breath to release the tension. Justice's niggling disapproval tugged at his attention and fueled his irritation.

Nonetheless, she didn't have the mien of a well-bedded woman. She was slumping, staring blankly at the dirty walls. The ubiquitous dust of the undercity made a grimy film of the tear tracks on her face. He didn't know what Fenris had done, though he could guess, and the vindication he'd expected, that their relationship would surely fail due to the elf's stupidity, did not even begin to fill him with satisfaction like he'd thought. Instead, the woman he loved was vulnerable and broken, and her pain settled into him like a sharp burning. He didn't know what to say, so he said the first thing he thought of, immediately regretting it.

"He left."

Hawke flinched like he'd hit her, then looked down to her lap and balled her fists. "He—I—how did you know?" she muttered to the ground.

Anders sighed. "I just know what to look for. He can't even stand to be touched." Some memory darkened her eyes, but he didn't ask; didn't want to know. "He's not stable, Hawke."

"And you are?" she shot back. He recoiled.

"…no. I'm not either. But at least I warned you."

She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her head in her hands. "No, I—I'm sorry. I didn't mean—I don't…" She looked at him, her expression a strange mix of contrition, hurt, and desperation. "That's not why I came."

He looked at his desk, his mind resisting the question that bubbled up in his throat. "Do you…want to talk about it?"

"No." She looked through the arches, at the dingy dirty night air that shone like sunlight compared to the interior of Darktown. "Never," she whispered.

He rose and went around her to the other side of the cot, rummaging in a small chest until he found his sparse store of potions. Selecting a slim vial filled with faintly gold liquid, he sat next to her on the cot and set it between them. Her eyes flicked down to the vial then up to him in askance.

"A contraceptive potion," he explained. "I brewed it for a woman at the—well, the patient it was meant for died. Have it."

There was a wry, humorless twist to her lips as she picked up the vial and tucked it somewhere in her robes. The flash of utterly bare skin underneath made him swallow thickly and look away. "This isn't why I came either, but thanks… I guess."

Anders nodded and stood, feeling awkward and useless. "Elves don't tend to carry diseases…like that. That's why places like the Rose—you don't need an exam." There was—something, rising up in his gut. He couldn't tell if he was nauseous, or angry, or depressed, but he felt sick, and for possibly the first time he could remember, he wanted to be away from Hawke. He hadn't exactly told the truth, but the likelihood that Fenris had anything communicable was slim to none, the fact that he was being made to consider what Fenris might have was disturbing, and the idea of examining Hawke so soon after they'd—he couldn't even hold the thought in his mind; couldn't bear it.

Hawke stood too, and he relaxed at the idea that she was leaving, only to suddenly find her lips on his and her hands working at the fastening of the robe at his throat when his guard was down. It was the script of one of his many fantasies: Hawke, disappointed by the Tevinter elf one way or another, realized that only Anders could comfort and love her properly. Anders' hand moved to her side, his thumb brushing her breast through the thin material, and when she sighed he set to exploring her mouth and engaging her tongue with his. The thought occurred to him that her taste, which he had longed to discover for what felt like ages, might not just be hers but also _Fenris'_. Had she bathed since they'd been together? It was the elf's fingers that had raked through her hair, his lips that left the line of marks over her collarbone.

He pressed his face to the juncture of her neck and shoulder, opposite the marks. Was her smell just hers? Her fingers continued to work at his robes and he felt the feathered pauldrons slip off of his shoulders. If he laid with her, would she even be thinking of him? He couldn't imagine that any of this was about him, or their feelings for each other. She was obviously only reacting to the elf, and he hated Fenris at that moment with a violent passion that rivaled his rancor for the Templars.

His chest ached as he straightened and held her away from him by the shoulders. Her robes were open to the waist. He could see her breast and the plane of her stomach, the column of her neck and the trimness of her waist. When he looked at her face she seemed confused.

"What's—?"

"You'll regret this," he choked out.

Her face colored and her eyes narrowed. "How _dare_ you tell me—"

"I'll regret it too."

She deflated so suddenly that he thought she might fall. Instead she sat heavily and put her head in her hands again.

He knew he'd done the right thing. He wanted to believe that it was because he couldn't take advantage of her, but he realized that it was only because he didn't want the pain it'd eventually bring. He knew that she would never have come to him except for Fenris, that even if she slept with him she'd think of the elf. The knowledge of how impossible it was for him to be with her, how very _not_ in love with him she was, was excruciating.

She hadn't said his name once.

"I see that you don't have your daggers," he began, moving to retrieve his stave. His back was to her. "I can escort you home, if…"

"No." She stood, brushed herself off, though the scum of Darktown wasn't so easily dislodged. "No, I'll be fine." She turned halfway to him, not quite looking at him. "Thank you. I… I'm sorry." He didn't even hear her leave.

He sank to his cot, lay down, and closed his eyes. Justice hummed approval, satisfied that Anders' obsession with Hawke was now at an end. Her disinterest was the best thing for Anders, for mages, for the world, the spirit thought. Free of pointless and distracting ruminations about the woman, they'd be able to devote themselves wholly to the freedom of mages.

At that moment, faintly smelling Hawke—or perhaps not _just_ Hawke—on his cot, everything in Anders seemed to hurt, and he couldn't be bothered to care.


End file.
